Initiation of Fire
by ThePink1 at Reefside.Net
Summary: Taranee finally succumbs to the pressure. A Happily Ever After All side-story.


"**Initiation of Fire"**

A Happily Ever After All side-story, by: _A J_

(Standard disclaimer applies)

During Chapter Six …

When Caleb and Cornelia had gone back to their tent, Nigel and Taranee had headed around a nearby hill to get some privacy, and to get out of Hay Lin's immediate 'vamping' range. To her relief, Taranee was able to think much clearer once they had gotten to the outer edge of her one-kilometer telepathic zone. She knew from exhaustive talks with her predecessor Halinor that the range and the ability would both extend eventually with practice, but she was more than happy with the current limit of a thousand yards, and only seven other minds to talk to readily. Hearing random strangers' thoughts was _not_ something she was looking forward to.

So she settled in the meantime to closing out all but the knowledge of the other girls' whereabouts in her mind, and concentrated on the boy before her as the two stretched out on her towel in seclusion. She ran her hands across his fuzzy chest muscles, enjoying the tickling sensation on her palms, and imagining with an anticipatory shudder what it would feel like against her … everywhere else. She gave a shudder of delight as she felt what that thought did to her body, and Nigel gave a gasp.

"Whoa, Firecracker, don't barbecue me until after I've done something to warrant it, okay?" She pulled her hands back, and noticed that they were warmer than the rest of her … well most of the rest of her. Her cheeks burned, and she could feel other places, secret places much farther down her body, heating up in anticipation … and fear. She decided to short-circuit the fear with some satisfaction of her curiosity instead.

"Why do you keep calling me that?" she asked. Nigel grinned.

"Two reasons," he said. "First, as you told me yourself, that was how you first became aware of your power, by diverting one of Uriah's firecrackers back at Halloween when you all first met. Second, well, we'll have to wait to get back to the tents for you to hear it, but … My mom's a big Josh Turner fan, and he put out a tune on his last album called 'Firecracker', and every time I hear it, I think of you, Taranee." He gave a laugh. "With one lyric's exception, of course; you're not a blonde." He pulled her in for a slow kiss, and the two teens rolled slowly over on the towel. Nigel's hands roamed slowly down from her cheeks, and he felt Taranee gasp against his lips when his thumbs found the top of her suit.

"Hey, T, relax," he said, in a falsetto approximation of Irma Lair. "It's just sex." He actually pulled off the Water Guardian's voice pretty well, even if the phrase was more likely to come from the little pervert Hay had become after her Week of Hell. Her eyes flew open accusingly at that, and she growled something in three successive languages he didn't know (Although he very well _did_ know one of the words she used! His dad was in construction after all.) and flipped them back over in an unexpected show of her Guardian strength.

"Oh, no. This is _way_ more than sex. This is … this is …" Her voice failed her, but he could hear her saying it to herself mentally through their touch, and wondered if she was sending on purpose or not. _"First TIME sex,"_ she thought out, and he gulped again. No wonder she was such a nervous wreck. He really shouldn't have been surprised. She was normally so omni-phobic that he had figured out that she'd never had a boyfriend back in her old hometown of Sesamo. She looked down at his thumbs, still trapped under her shoulder-straps, and gave a nervous chuckle. "You're gonna have to be patient with me today, Nige. No way I'm giving up on this, but … I have to get used to it in parts, okay? Like … First things first."

She sat up with a squirm and a wriggle, and his caught thumbs brought the top of her suit down, trapping her arms to her sides and baring all but her nipples on her warm brown chest. Nigel fought not to drool at the thought that ran through his head. Her skin was exactly the color of fresh-baked pumpernickel bread, and all he wanted to do was lay face-first in her cleavage and find out if she smelled as good as she looked. Taranee giggled.

"I heard that, you know." She lowered herself over him, letting him get a good long whiff of her freshly ocean-dipped skin. "Well?" she teased. "Am I as good as pumpernickel?"

"Better," he managed to moan, afraid she'd move before he'd figured out her scent. After another long intake of it, he held his breath and just nuzzled her gently-swelling chest on either side of his head. After a moment, and another slow partaking of her, he sighed out "Ginger and cumin, cayenne pepper and cilantro, a bit of cinnamon …" She giggled again.

"That's my lip gloss." She sighed happily. "So I'm the spicy side of the spice cabinet, huh?" Taranee sat up again. "My turn to figure you out." With a shrug of her shoulders, she had her arms out of the suit, leaving it half-rolled down her chest, and she lowered herself down onto his, inhaling. After a moment, she sat slowly back up again, looking slightly disappointed. "All I smell is salt," she pouted, nibbling on her lower lip.

"Well, men's scents are strongest where we sweat the most," he pointed out reasonably. "Underarms," she crinkled her nose, and he laughed. "Back of the neck and down the spine," he continued, and she waved a hand.

"Now covered in sand," she countered, with a moue. They'd rolled off the towel with that last flip, and he'd already been sweating up a storm next to her warm body.

"The only other place is … wellll … still covered," he said leadingly. She looked down at where they were both still clothed, and blushed mightily, to the point that he could feel the heat rolling off her again. "How about another quick dip to stay cool," he suggested. All of a sudden, he was glad they were near a large body of water for her first time, for _his_ sake. Lord only knew the damage she could manage if she overheated. He breathed a sigh of relief when she nodded after a nervous glance over her shoulder, and another one down towards where both their lower halves crossed each other.

The two splashed back into the water, spending several minutes floating like Will and Matt were still, as they could see with surreptitious glances that way. It was a wonder the two sweethearts hadn't been dragged sputtering and screaming into the full-blown water-war Hay and Eric were engaged in. Nigel grinned over at Taranee. "Cooled down, Firecracker?"

There was a quick burst of steam as she blushed under his gaze, then with a giggle she said, "Maybe we should just stay in the water."

"Oh, no. I'd rather be burned than scalded any day, T'ree. I'll take my damages one Element at a time." He grinned back. "Why do you think I'm only dating one of you? I'd spare Irma from Martin, but I know my limits." She laughed, and sank. Bursting up from under him, she displayed her Guardian strength again by towing him in to her towel and tossing him down, only to land on top of him with another giggle.

"Now …" she breathed. He noticed that her suit had slid the rest of the way down to her abdomen, letting her lovely orbs loose to be admired by all and sundry … and him. She lowered her exposed breasts slowly to his curly-haired chest, and they both gasped at first contact. "Just … warn me if I need to cool us off," she said. Taranee sighed, laying her full weight along his body, and he could hear her breathing cycle through overexcited to fully-relaxed and back again, with every minute movement either of them made. Eventually, she turned up her face to look at his, and they simply stared into each other's eyes, enjoying their next step. Then she smiled softly, and slowly got back to her hands and knees over him. She backed away until her fingers caught the edge of his dark blue, half-dry boxers.

With a nervous giggle, she wrapped her fingers tighter in the material, and looked back up at him again. Her eyes got the familiar look of a blaze in them, but it was a shade different from those he'd seen before. Taranee's usual fire was heated by anger, either for a foe who'd hurt her, her friends or an innocent bystander, or for the many injustices she'd decided it was her job to right. This new burn was a low smolder, and it almost frightened him more, because there was no guarantee it wouldn't blaze out of control and sear him away. For her though, he was ready and willing to take that chance. He nodded. If she was ready for step two, he was.

With a yank, she bared his all, and gasped at the sight before her. That sketch Hay had teased her about once in history class? Nothing. The statues of David and the rest they'd seen at the Library and Museum? Paltry inadequacies. But here before her, revealed for the first time for a woman's eyes (She'd gleaned that much from their skin-to-skin contact earlier: that this was a first for _both_ of them.) was what had to be the most spectacular specimen of manhood, all for her. She slid his shorts the rest of the way off, and tossed them up onto the hill that obscured them from the rest of their friends.

Nigel was holding his breath, waiting for her next move. The only problem was, now that she had him exposed to the world, she wasn't moving. "Ta … Taranee?" he finally said, and her eyes darted back to his from the wonders below his waist. It stole his breath again when he saw the new look in her eyes. That quiet smolder he'd seen earlier had flared out of control, and she was trembling faintly, holding herself still and in control by the frayed ends of spider-silk strings. "Another dip?" he suggested, and with a minute nod, she darted for the water ahead of him. He could hear the hiss as her feet met surf while he was still climbing to his feet.

They swam in slow circles until Taranee's pulse clambered back down to something resembling normal, then made their way back to the towel again. Taranee flipped it out a couple times to get rid of the sand they were accumulating, while Nigel put his shorts back up on the hill and weighed them down with a rock. "We've got to remember to gather some driftwood," Taranee muttered, eyeing the handfuls that were strewn across the beach at the high-tide mark. Noticing they were smack in the middle of it, she moved the towel up another few feet, just to be safe.

She was kneeling back down onto the towel when Nigel kissed the back of her neck, just below where her hair was swept to the side into her many braids. A gasp, then a shudder ran through her pumpernickel-brown frame. "Need another dip?" she felt him whisper by her ear, and shook her head, buffeting him with her multitude of beads.

"All I need is you, Nigel," she murmured, throwing her arms up and back to hold him against her by his neck. He trailed his hands down from her shoulders, passing gently across her nipples with his fingertips, and running down to her waist, where her suit was bunched together. Gathering the material, he gave it a tug, so it rubbed across her most sensitive areas below. She gasped again, and wound her fingers into his hair, turning her face to his for a kiss. When it threatened to go from slow burn to scorch, she pulled away, breathing deeply. _"Homina, homina, homina …"_

"My sentiments exactly," he whispered in her ear, chuckling.

Not trusting her voice, she sent _"Na, your line's supposed to be 'AHHHH! Noooo! Taraneeee, it burrrrns!' while I cook you with my love."_ They both chuckled, and she extricated from his grasp to circle around and kneel at the other end of the towel. It left them with a safety buffer of about a foot, which they only crossed with their hands for another moment. _"Man, this is harder than I thought,"_ she thought with a sigh. He nodded in agreement, and then chanced a look down. Seeing where his eyes went, she gasped again. _"Wow, and so is that."_

With tentative fingers, she reached out to touch him, and it was his turn to gasp when her superheated hand wrapped around his throbbing length. _"Too much?"_ she asked, as afraid to hurt him as she was to get hurt by him. He shook his head stoically, taking shallow breaths in preparation for, well … whatever she had in mind next. He certainly wasn't prepared for what she _did_ do, however.

Putting her enhanced strength to use again, Taranee grabbed his hip with her unoccupied hand, and borrowing an idea from Ultimate Fighting, 'led him by his head' and onto his back on the towel, never letting go as she spun him over. Sitting on his knees to trap him, she giggled again. "Whoa," he managed to utter.

"_Let's see if I can figure you out, now,"_ she sent, and got down to eye-level with his exposed parts. She splayed the overgrowth of hair he had below to get a better look at the length of him, whistling cheerily as she turned him around in her hands. Then she leaned further, her nipples pressing into his thighs as she took a cautious sniff of his personal scent. Taranee immediately recoiled, and sneezed. _"Well, darn. That'll have to wait a while; we've swum too much. All of you smells like a salt-lick."_ Their eyes locked again, and she planted both her hands around his hard shaft. _"Say when," _she said, slowly running them up and down.

His eyes crossed as his head fell back, and before he even had the chance to tell her telepathically _"Too late,"_ he went off like a geyser in front of her, spattering both of them with male dew. Taranee squealed and fell back, her butt sinking between his legs as she watched the human eruption before her.

"_T, you okay?"_ she faintly heard Hay asking from a distance.

"_Y-yeah, just … caught off guard by …"_ At a loss for words to describe what had just happened, she simply sent a mental image of the occurrence. Hay's giggles were audible to both of them, as well as mentally sent.

"_Enjoy the fruits of your labors, T. And don't forget to make him give as good as he gets."_ Taranee's answering _'Eeeep!'_ just earned her another round of laughter.

"What news from the peanut gallery?" Nigel muttered, finally able to breathe enough to joke again. She looked down at him in wonder.

"Hay just told me … to enjoy the results," she murmured, blushing. The two looked around at the copious mess he'd made, and started laughing. "On the bright side, you saved the towel," she giggled. Hopping up, she helped him to his feet, and led him back to the water. "Wait," she said, pulling him to a stop. Turning around, she knelt before him, and before she could think about it further, darted forward and kissed the end of his softening penis. She licked her lips as she stood back up, her expression pensive.

"What was that all about?" he asked, feeling more confused by the second. She held up a finger, and he could tell she was conferring with Hay Lin again by the slightly foggy look in her eyes. When she finally blinked it away with a smile, he said "Well?"

"Had to get the ruling from the food expert. She says everybody tastes different." With a naughty, knowing grin, she said, "You're Worcestershire." At his thoroughly bewildered look, she laughed, kissed him and pulled him into the ocean to scrub up one salty liquid with another.

Once back on the beach, she flicked her towel once and shimmied the rest of the way out of her suit. Nigel lay it down by his boxers, and put a rock on each to keep them from blowing away. The pair sank to the ground together, kissing softly, and Nigel slowly rolled them until she was spread under him.

Kissing and nibbling, he slowly moved down her body, pausing at heart-level to make a cross pattern over each of her superb breasts. He kissed slowly around each nipple, then gave each a soft bite and suckle, making Taranee moan and dig her hands in his damp hair. Nigel kept moving down, leaving a moist trail of lip-prints that started to steam off the Fire Guardian's skin behind him.

Feeling a fresh surge of heat go through her as he got to the bottom of her abdomen, Taranee caught hold of his shoulders. "J-just a second, Nigel," she whispered. "T-talk to me, okay? Tell me what you're thinking. I … I need a minute." He looked back up the slope of her body until their eyes met, and gulped at the barely-contained flames he could see in her gaze.

"Whoa. I ah … actually _wasn't,_ really, T'ree. Except how good you taste, anyway." He kissed, softly and slowly, the top of her _mons._ She shivered and gasped. Suddenly realizing how close to over-the-edge she already was, he reversed course, kissing his way back up her body, carefully holding the rest of his body away so the only point of contact between them was his pursed lips, until he had smooched a gentle path back up to her lips, and their mouths reunited. Taranee moaned again low in her throat, and Nigel parted his lips to run his tongue across hers. Her mouth opened, and she sucked his tongue in with her next breath. The rush of boiling heat inside her mouth had him gasping instantly.

"_Wow, Taranee! You feel like you're running a fever!" _he concentrated on thinking clearly. She moaned again under him, and her hands fell from his head to around his waist, yanking his body against hers. He hissed in surprise at the touch of her superheated skin against his. Nothing burned … _yet_ … but he could tell she was on the border between safety and scorching him outright. "Jaysus," he managed to mutter when they broke for air. "T'ree? D'you need 'nother dip?"

"_Not as much as I need you," _she sent, holding his hips against hers and grinding slowly. Her fresh contact with Hay Lin's sex-demented mind had awakened her earlier urges from the parking-lot. He gasped, she grinned, and spread her thighs so he fell between them.

He gasped again at the touch of her hot wet core along the length of him. She really _could_ fry him, it felt like. _'But man, what a way to go!'_ he decided. "You sure, T'ree?" She nodded, holding him tight against her. He leaned in to kiss her again, and wriggled his hips so their respective parts lined up.

She felt his tip find the way in, and with a surge of desperate adrenaline, she bucked her hips up, then screamed into his lips at the tearing deep inside her.

Nigel froze. He looked at her face, waiting for her eyes to open. _"Taranee ..?"_ he questioned tentatively.

The Fire Guardian lay under him, trying to remember how to breathe. The feel of him, hot, hard, and deep inside her, had her whole body roiling with sensation. She slowly raised her head, recapturing his lips, and opened her eyes to look into his. _"Just … just give me a second … Nige … I … don't want to miss … anything …"_ She moaned against him on the last word. Her hips slowly shuffled millimeters apart from him, and the sudden rush of cool air between their broiling bodies made her gasp anew. _"You sure you don't want to try this in the water?"_

She almost laughed at his emphatic _"NO!"_ "No," he continued verbally, smiling to take the bite out of his invective. "Like I said, Firecracker: one Element at a time." He kissed her again, and sank the half-inch back into her. They both gasped as the swell of heat inside her blossomed higher. _"Maybe if that were _colder_ water … like arctic, eh?"_ he couldn't help the half-joking thought. She giggled under him, and they both panted through what that felt like.

"_You never struck me as the Polar-Bear-Club type, Nige,"_ she replied, and resigned herself to the waves of pleasure his laughter, and the resulting movement, engendered.

He hoisted himself up on his elbows over her, just admiring the view: her sweat-streaked brow, her kiss-swelled lips, her dreamy, unfocussed eyes looking somewhere past his shoulder … _'Probably trying to think cool thoughts, staring at clouds,'_ he hoped, and grinned as her lips quirked into a grin when she heard that.

"_Not quite,"_ she responded. _"Actually, admiring the way the light looks through your red hair. C'mere; I want a closer look."_ She pulled them back together, meeting him halfway by arching her back, and they both moaned as their bodies shifted against each other. _"Ooooh, yeah, that's what was missing. Movement!"_ Taranee lay back again, pulling him along to maintain their kiss, and rolled her hips against his. He practically yelped as her inner heat ratcheted up another notch around him.

'_C'est la vie,'_ he thought, rocking back and forth against her on his knees. She moaned louder, and he felt her hands claw up from his hips to his shoulders, where she hung on for dear life as her body upped both the tempo of their dance and the temperature. Just when he thought she was going to erupt like a volcano under him, she went completely still, not even breathing. _"Taranee?"_ he called telepathically, worried anew. Her eyes snapped open for a second, finding his, and she smiled widely as she thrust her hips against him with a vengeance.

"_H-hang on …"_ was all she sent, before her body bucked, and the heat around them soared beyond anything he'd thought they could safely survive.

She continued to moan and clench around him, and despite what he was beginning to feel was mortal danger, he couldn't help himself. He kissed her lips, her throat, and then her breasts as he moved against her while she orgasmed. Just when she was starting to breathe normally again, his thrusting put him over the edge, and that took her along with him all over again.

By the time they gasped to a stop moments later, they were sweating profusely, chests heaving. "Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod …" Taranee panted quietly over and over.

"You can say that again," He murmured into her chest, nuzzling one breast. "Though I have to amend it to oh, my _goddess_." She blushed so hard he could feel it where he rested, over a foot away from her flaming cheeks.

"That's blasphemy … but thank you," she whispered back eventually, running her fingers through his hair. She slowly sat up, and loath to leave the now-welcoming warmth of her body, he adjusted his legs to stay between hers. They ended up cradling each other in their encircling legs, sitting in the middle of her towel. Taranee noticed he hadn't lost any length or hardness, and grinned at him mischievously. "Ready for another trial by Fire?" she breathed against his mouth, nipping at his lower lip.

"You sure you don't need another dip?" he asked nervously, feeling her heat up all over again.

"Mmmm, maybe before round three," she sighed, and resettled herself across his lap, taking him deep inside once more.

And away they went.

_w.i.t.c.h._

Luba and Halinor stepped back from the viewing pool with matching smiles of satisfaction. Now that all five of their Guardian girls were women, the true Magic could begin.


End file.
